The Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar is the company’s mid-range watch, featuring most of the fitness and mapping smarts of the Enduro 2 in a more wallet-friendly package…
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BEST MID-RANGE FITNESS WATCH
Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar
$680 / £550 / garmin.com
Design: 4/5
Fitness insights: 5/5
Smart features: 4/5
Battery life: 4/5
OVERALL: 4/5
PROS:
- Powerful fitness features
- Excellent offline mapping and battery
CONS:
- Less durable than best-in-class watches
- Worse app support than Apple Watch
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Think of the Forerunner 955 Solar as something of an Enduro 2 light. It features a range of similar features – fantastic fitness and mapping smarts, mobile payments, third-party app support and wellness tracking – but it misses out on some physical traits such as month-long battery life and top-tier durability.
Costing significantly less, though, it could be the ideal option for folks who love what Garmin’s doing with its wearables but don’t need the best on offer.
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No month-long battery doesn’t mean the Forerunner 955 Solar isn’t a long-lasting option. Thanks to its solar charging capability, the watch still lasts 20 days on a single charge (or 49 hours in GPS mode), using the same Kindle-like display technology as the Enduro 2, only with a slightly smaller screen: 1.3 inches versus 1.4 inches.
Many might like the Forerunner 955 Solar’s more pared-back design, with its smaller size and simpler chassis. But don’t be thrown off by the plastic build. The watch is 5ATM water- and dust-resistant, and thanks to Corning Gorilla Glass DX, its display is scuff-resistant, despite not featuring the Sapphire glass of the Apple Watch Ultra or Garmin Enduro 2.
Third-party app support
Smarts come in the form of the Garmin Connect and ConnectIQ apps, which supplement Garmin’s robust fitness experience with a healthy ecosystem of third-party apps and services including mobile payment.
A good choice for travels – whether you’re blazing a trail for the first time or navigating back to where you started – the Forerunner 955 might not have LTE capabilities, but its mapping is top-tier.
Runners also get the same Trail VO2 Max, Ultrarun activity and Adventure Training features of the Enduro, and Garmin’s PacePro and Grade-adjusted Pace are perfect for long-distance athletes.
Accurate wrist-based heart-rate tracking, Pulse Ox5, sleep tracking, breathing monitoring and more boost the experience, and every morning when you wake up, Garmin’s watches generate a morning report so you can see how you slept, your step count the day before and other general fitness and wellness insights.
If around ten days of normal or 15 hours of GPS use are more than you need, then the Forerunner 955 is also available in a non-solar version with slightly reduced battery life and a lower price tag of £479.
